London, Apr 16 (ANI): The future of space exploration is set to witness a revolutionary change as engineers at the University of Glasgow are designing a new breed of planetary explorers, which are as tiny as dust particles.
These tiny, shape-shifting devices named as Smart Dust can be carried on the wind like dust particles, and are smart enough to communicate, fly in formation and take scientific measurements.
"The concept of using smart dust swarms for planetary exploration has been talked about for some time, but this is the first time anyone has looked at how it could actually be achieved. Computer chips of the size and sophistication needed to make a smart dust particle now exist and we are looking through the range of polymers available to find one that matches our requirements," said Dr John Barker of the University of Glasgow.
Smart Dust particles consist of a computer chip, about a millimeter in dimension, and are surrounded by a polymer sheath, which can be made to wrinkle or smooth out by applying a small voltage.
The wrinkling and smoothening of the surface of the polymer would help the
Smart Dust to hop towards a target, even in swirling winds.
Smart Dust would use wireless networking to communicate with each other and form swarms.
Dr. Barker, who will be describing the possible applications of Smart Dust at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Preston later this week, said, "In our simulations we've shown that a swarm of 50 smart dust particles can organize themselves into a star formation, even in turbulent wind. The ability to fly in formation means that the smart dust could form a phased array. It would then be possible to process information between the distributed computer chips and collectively beam a signal back to an orbiting spacecraft."
The engineers are of the opinion that these Smart Dust could be used in the future exploration of Mars and Venus, but it would be more appropriate for Venus, as the latter's atmosphere is much denser and could carry smart sensors up to a few centimeters in size.
However, the engineers are now eying space explorers much tinier than Smart Dust.
"By 2020, we should have chips that have components which are just a few nanometers across, which means our smart particles would behave more like macro-molecules diffusing through an atmosphere rather than dust grains," Dr. Barker said.
"We are still at an early stage, working on simulations and components. We have a lot of obstacles to overcome before we are even ready to physically test our designs," he added. (ANI)